Best biographies 2018

5 William Penn by Andrew Murphy (Oxford University Press) – Andrew Murphy's intricate and surprisingly personality-driven biography of Pennsylvania's founding weirdo William Penn is similar to many books on this year's list in that it's easily the new definitive work on its subject.

Murphy ranges over the whole width of Penn's fascinating life in a confident and knowledgeable way no other biographer has ever approached.

4 Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World by Ramachandra Guha (Knopf) – Ramachandra Guha follows up his brilliant Gandhi Before India with this enormous work covering Gandhi's world-famous years, which chronicles pretty much every breath Gandhi took for the last 30 years of his life and manages to make it all completely fascinating.

3 Unbeaten: Rocky Marciano's Fight for Perfection in a Crooked World by Mike Stanton (Henry Holt) – Stanton's raw and sympathetic biography of unbeaten heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano s